Cops Off Campus Research Project (#COCData)
Our primary goals with the Cops Off Campus database are pedagogy, capacity-building, and data collection for the struggles of abolition. All of our relational, development, and administrative practices are informed by these goals and our politics. We will never knowingly share any information with cops or cop-sympathizers. We are especially concerned with maintaining the security and privacy of personally-identifying information (PII) or private information. We hope this document makes clear exactly how we will hold these promises. It is split into several sections:
All data you share with us through our forms (listed below) are processed and stored by Airtable. While we don’t talk to cops, it seems that Airtable might under some circumstances: they “may disclose information…as necessary to comply with applicable law, including governmental requests, law enforcement requests, and otherwise to protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of you, [them], or others”. For this reason, we ask that you don’t share anything that a cop could use against you, us, or anyone in our communities via the forms. If you’d like to share other information, you can email us directly at copsoffcampus@protonmail.com.
According to Airtable, all data you share is protected by 256-bit TLS encryption from your browser to their servers, where they’re protected by AES-256 encryption. These are considered best practices among most developers. Like many other services, their hosting infrastructure is built around Amazon Web Services, is SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliant, and is ISO 274001 certified.
Our operational security and privacy protocols include strictly-limited access to the Cops Off Campus Database and privacy flags for each bit of information (given by form respondents) which indicate the degree to which they may be shared (if at all). If you would like us to delete any information you’ve submitted, please email us at CopsOffCampus@protonmail.com and we will remove it from the database immediately.
The Get Involved form (https://bit.ly/CopsOffCampus_Get-Involved) explicitly requests contact information (name, pronouns, email, Twitter handle, university) so that we can stay in touch, and optionally put you in contact with other folks who’re interested in the same university (or are already doing work there). You can share as much or as little as you like, and you can choose if or how we share that information.
The Data Sharing form (https://bit.ly/CopsOffCampus_Share-Data) is primarily designed to teach you how to examine the university and help us build a database about cops on campus, so we can get them out. It does not require you to submit any PII. We recognize, however, that some information you might share could reveal your identity. While we encourage you to share your email address with us (so we can follow-up on your responses), you’re certainly not obligated to do so, especially if doing so will put you at risk. We do not collect or maintain any other information besides that which you knowingly and voluntarily share. You can choose whether you want this information made public (anonymous and aggregated) when you submit it to us.
The Organizing form (https://bit.ly/CopsOffCampus_Organizing) serves to help us understand what work is already going on, and to connect people and orgs for immediate aid and long-term solidarity. We will not publish your responses anywhere unless we have your explicit permission.